In buying out its Exane equities joint venture partner, BNP Paribas reckons it can make a success of a business where few European peers have thrived. It also hopes to see a halo effect on underperforming franchises like ECM.

Black-owned broker-dealers have largely been excluded from the mainstream of corporate debt and equity capital raising. The bulge-bracket banks are now working to correct this, inviting firms owned and staffed by racial minorities, women and veterans to lead their own deals and showcase their capabilities to corporate clients.

After a lifetime in Vienna, Peter Bosek has moved 1,600 kilometres north to head up Blackstone’s banking operation in the Baltics. He talks to Euromoney about life in Tallinn, how to take advantage of millennials’ new-found enthusiasm for investment and what banks can learn from Netflix.

Recent reports by UBS and consultancy Bain set out to explain who China’s high net-worth individuals are, what kind of private banking services they want and how local and global lenders can best serve them.

Whether doing a branch network tour or complying with regulation, Bank of Saint Helena boss Josephine George has a job that is like few other bankers’ anywhere.

Jean Pierre Mustier has spoken candidly with Euromoney throughout his five years of running UniCredit. Here is the inside story of how the first foreign chief executive of Italy’s international banking champion came close to continental leadership but left in acrimony – after clashing with the country’s financial establishment and with chairman-elect Pier Carlo Padoan.

The link between share ownership and voting rights has been weakening for a long time. With dual-class share structures more popular than ever, is the struggle to resist their rise now over?

Given its reputation, it’s not surprising that Argentina’s bonds are pricing in a high chance of default in coming years. It’s a little harder to understand why the country’s creditors are enabling this.

More companies are preparing to accept payment in crypto as the number of customers with digital wallets swells. But a confusing proliferation of payment methods means that innovation has made collecting payments harder, not easier.

Banque du Caire was on the cusp of completing a $500 million listing in London and Cairo last year when Covid hit. Its chairman Tarek Fayed meets Euromoney to talk about investing in people and digital – and why he still wants to complete a slimmed-down stock sale when conditions allow.

UBS’s wealth management team had another stellar year despite the Covid crisis – and once again the Swiss lender takes the top spot in Euromoney’s private banking survey.

Once a branch line of the banking industry, private banking and wealth management is now a driver in its own right. It offers a powerful way to grow income, valuations and returns. But the pressure is on as banks need to scale up or sell out.

The Spanish group’s rise to private banking prominence didn’t happen overnight. An internal merger helped, as did work integrating Europe and Latin America. The next step will be the biggest of all, as it begins a concerted push into the US.

The battle for control of Petropavlovsk has been raging since the board and management were unexpectedly voted out at the AGM in June. But only now has it become clear the role a conversion of bonds may have played. At issue are allegations of unequal bondholder treatment.

Nobody had more to lose from the suspension of the Ant float than the bookrunners, in particular the joint sponsors. They had closed books on a record deal that looked good not just for them and Ant but for the Greater China capital markets. There are many questions about what happens next: how should Ant be reshaped to revive the listing and who should share the blame for not responding to shifting regulatory sands?

China’s decision to scrap Ant Group’s IPO made headlines around the world. But why did the Party act so late and why is it so concerned about Ant? Euromoney looks at the reasons behind the decision and asks what the future holds for a firm hemmed in by a raft of new rules on everything from online lending to anti-trust and data privacy.

Corporates borrowed their way through the crisis of 2020. What might happen next? Seven months after the first lockdowns began in Europe and the US, is coronavirus now priced into debt markets?

Banks in Europe face a bleak choice. They can redouble cost cutting and capture the move to digital. They can also top up capital with AT1s, for which there is still a bid. But as the acute phase of the crisis now approaches and loan losses rise, banks’ fabled capital strength faces a stern test

Japanese conglomerates have woken up to the need to divest non-core assets; international private equity houses have plenty of dry powder with which to buy them. This happy alignment appears to have survived Covid-19, unlike other forms of cross-border M&A.

For an IPO alternative designed not to give a first-day pop, liquidity is the real measure of success.

As European bank consolidation finally gets under way, Euromoney looks at the financial firepower of the region’s top 20 players. Which banks are now best-placed to do the acquiring and which are at risk of being swallowed up? Mid-tier banks in southern Europe look especially vulnerable.

The firm didn’t foresee the coronavirus crisis when it decided to pivot its investment bank more explicitly towards clients than ever before. But as so often, its timing could not have been better

It was not the only bank that came into the Covid crisis with a strong balance sheet, but, as in 2008, the bank has shown that its diverse businesses provide plentiful earnings to take big reserves, even while it keeps financing large corporates and small businesses alike. Deposits have flooded in, technology investments have proved their worth and it is winning more business from mid-cap clients inside and outside the US – and it coped with the temporary absence of a legendary chief executive.

The $40 trillion environmental, social and governance investment industry is built on a bedrock of data from an ever-widening range of sources. Is that data fit for purpose?

The EU’s new recovery fund is a historic step to help the countries worst affected by Covid avoid a debt trap. If the EU’s short-term bills become a risk-free, interest-rate instrument, this temporary response to the deadly virus could become a permanent change to Europe’s capital markets

A new Euromoney podcast series traces the relationship between space and the private sector, from the early Cold War state-funded model of Apollo to one in which venture capital backs the most interesting and visionary ideas.

Some parts of US investment bank earnings in the first quarter of the year looked more like boom than bust as record trading and debt issuance helped offset weakness elsewhere. Now the banks are building reserves to prepare for coming out of lockdown

A blizzard of monetary and fiscal policy announcements finally began to calm market nerves this week; but bankers and analysts are struggling to figure out what more might be needed – and just what kind of crisis this is.

UBS Global Wealth Management is the world’s best wealth manager. It is an accolade the firm has enjoyed for 13 of the 17 years of Euromoney’s annual survey. But its financial performance does not match its scale. A new partnership at the top of the firm has a plan to integrate business lines and streamline processes.

As the howls of anguish at negative interest rates reach a crescendo, central bankers and prominent economists are still convinced that Europe’s financial sector would be even worse off were base rates above zero. Banks are increasingly vocal in their opposition to the policy. Are they right to believe the systemic risks are growing? And could a move away from negative rates hurt banks more than if the ECB kept them?